Finding Our Way: The Headwaters of the Applegate Trail
Hello and welcome to the May 2026 edition of Solid Ground!
This month, I revisit the lessons learned from one of the most popular stories I’ve ever written, the long, strange, trip of the Applegate family west from St. Louis in the early 1840s and the road the three brothers forged through alpine and desert country in the hopes of saving lives.
Read beyond the essay for a Ground Work practice for finding yourself, and a time-based view of the flower garden’s transformation. I’m also sharing some of the original hand-drawn maps and sketches I created for the Girl’s Guide to the Wild and its companion Nature Journal and Activity Book for middle graders.
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News
Cover reveal! I’m pleased to share that after a long and winding road, my forthcoming book, a hyperlocal, storytelling-based look at the soil and groundwater crisis has a cover that I’m sharing here with my readers first. It’s beyond exciting to see this book finally making its way into the world and I look forward to sharing more about this important topic and the people and places I showcase as part of the discussion in the coming months. For now, enjoy this sneak peek of the cover art and back-of-book copy:
“As everyday life goes on, fallout from what seem like distant crises—the floods, the
wildfires, the toxic spills—is poisoning the soil and water underneath neighborhoods and
farms and cities at home and around the world. This is the urgent message delivered in
Buried, a book that is deeply informed, deeply personal, harrowing, but never without
hope. Geologist, field researcher, and outdoor guru Ruby McConnell pursues the larger
story of widespread hidden contamination through the experience of the places she knows
best, in Oregon.
Drawing on her years working directly on cleanup sites, the author takes readers into the
underground world where leaking infrastructure, toxic industrial sites, and abandoned
facilities spread chemicals through soils and aquifers everywhere. These contaminants, in
turn, are linked to unsafe drinking water, failing crops, cancer clusters, biodiversity
decline, and deepening environmental injustice.
McConnell’s real-world experience and vivid storytelling bring this buried, ongoing
disaster to the surface in a powerful, accessible way. As PFAS contamination, fracking
byproducts, and dwindling clean-water reserves force public awareness, her book offers
clarity and urgency, along with pathways toward realistic solutions. Part investigation, part
narrative journey, and part call to action, Buried shows why understanding what lies
beneath our feet is essential to building a healthier and more resilient future on a global scale.”
Essay: Headwaters of the Applegate Trail
In summer of 2023 Alta Journal published my retelling of the road hunters of the Applegate Trail as a five-part serial. It was picked up by major news aggregates and became one of Alta’s breakout stories of the year. The serial was adapted in large part from excerpts my book Wilderness and the American Spirit, which came out the following year.
The Applegate Trail came into my life by happenstance, an impulsive turn on a country road. For a long while it existed for me only as an overpromised and under-delivered series of roadside attractions and historical markers that I found myself piecing together as I moved through Southern Oregon. By spring of 2020, what had started five years earlier as a diversion, became a primary occupation. I spent months hunting the contemporary trail’s cryptic signposts, mostly made of old chunks of railroad, in search of wagon ruts and old waysides. and figuring out how such an important path could have been lost to history.